Sintering of powders is part of the process in manufacturing various ceramic materials. Generally speaking, sintering includes mixing water, a binder, a deflocculant, and ceramic powder to form a slurry, then drying the slurry to form a dried powder such as by spray-drying, pressing the dried powder such as in a mold to form a green body (i.e., an unsintered ceramic item), heating the green body at low temperature to burn off the binder, then sintering at high temperature to fuse the ceramic particles together into the ceramic material.
It is known that sintering is associated with great shrinkage of the ceramic material as the ceramic powder is consolidated. Shrinkage in turn gives rise to camber, or warping and cracking, and surface damage of the ceramic material.
The present disclosure relates to methods of sintering ceramic materials which reduces or eliminates such difficulties associated with sintering of ceramic materials.